The work around is great as long as you don't like to channel surf, and what TiVo user does?

My wife likes to watch live TV all the time, so if the Mini couldn't pull a tuner it would be a deal breaker in my household. I on the other hand only watch news live, everything else I watch recorded.

Since it seems the 2 tuner Premieres may never be able to act as a host DVR for the Mini, does that also mean that when dynamic tuner allocation is released that the 2 tuners will also not be in the available pool of tuners for the Mini?

For those with multiple Premieres it would seem logical to put all available tuners onto the network for Live TV.

Is having all tuners on the network possible on the current Premiere hardware? not just those of the Host DVR.

In my case I would rather pull a Live TV tuner from one of my regular Premieres, than use one off the Elite/XL4. The same would apply for someone using OTA on a 2 tuner.

Since it seems the 2 tuner Premieres may never be able to act as a host DVR for the Mini, does that also mean that when dynamic tuner allocation is released that the 2 tuners will also not be in the available pool of tuners for the Mini?

I believe the answer is yes, the base Premiere tuners will not be in the available pool of tuners for the Mini. Thinking about DTA some more, I'm wondering if DTA will be sophisticated enough to know that there are multiple host-DVRs available on the network or if a user would still be required to assign a host-DVR to the Mini. I suspect the latter but hope for the former.

I believe the answer is yes, the base Premiere tuners will not be in the available pool of tuners for the Mini. Thinking about DTA some more, I'm wondering if DTA will be sophisticated enough to know that there are multiple host-DVRs available on the network or if a user would still be required to assign a host-DVR to the Mini. I suspect the latter but hope for the former.

I have three Two-tuner Premiere's, just sitting in their boxes, new. I picked them up cheap and thought about selling them. If this is true, oh well.

Maybe these units will be eligible for the $150 or $99 Lifetime soon, or at least the $6.95 plan. Tivo did let me do one transfer of the $6.95 plan, from an HD to a Premiere. At least they still have OTA, built-in.

I agree, they have to prioritize development and get the most bang for their buck. I think they are absolutely moving towards a single DVR centric solution which will benefit most users even if it's an annoyance to some.

First thing they need to do is get the XL4 even lower price-wise and then release a six tuner unit with faster CPU.

I agree. A Mini will always be paired to a specific host and only be able to pull a tuner from that host. I also think that once DTA is working you will still be limited to allocating just 2 tuners to network streaming. The reason being is that leaves 1 tuner for local live viewing on the host and 1 tuner for recording. That seems to be the minimum experience TiVo expects. (i.e. watch one thing while recording another) Once we get a 6 tuner then that will likely have the ability to allocate 3-4 tuners to the network if you so desire.

Live news. Maybe live sports, although if you're really watching them, you'd be on the main TV with surround sound, a screen the size of Texas, and a Premiere.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jmpage2

My wife likes to watch live TV all the time, so if the Mini couldn't pull a tuner it would be a deal breaker in my household. I on the other hand only watch news live, everything else I watch recorded.

I said if you like to channel surf. I watch sports and news live as well. But I record everything I like to watch, including the stuff I plan to watch live -- never know if something comes up. For news shows, I just set them to only keep two episodes. With four live tuners, you could easily record your four favorite news shows channels and switch between them and still watch 'live".

__________________
How good can it be, if it isn't HD?
Ben Drawbaugh
Engadget HD

TiVo must have some data suggesting that a good percentage of their customers still watch live TV, otherwise I'm not sure why they would focus so much attention on that capability.

Honestly if I had a Mini I would dedicate 0 tuners to live TV and use it for streaming only. I've watched live TV maybe once in the last 2 years and that was breaking news. If there really was something like that going on I could just move to the other TV or use the Mini to setup a recording of the news channel and then stream that recording. I have no need to watch real live TV on a Mini, or any TiVo really.

Same here except I just found out I need to allocate a tuner for live TV if I want to watch Xfinity on-demand on my Mini. I was hoping this works like YouTube but that isn't the case.

I said if you like to channel surf. I watch sports and news live as well. But I record everything I like to watch, including the stuff I plan to watch live -- never know if something comes up. For news shows, I just set them to only keep two episodes. With four live tuners, you could easily record your four favorite news shows channels and switch between them and still watch 'live".

True, it's a reasonable workaround to just schedule things to record, although it might be a pain if you forgot have to go in and record, and then play that back.

Same here except I just found out I need to allocate a tuner for live TV if I want to watch Xfinity on-demand on my Mini. I was hoping this works like YouTube but that isn't the case.

I forgot about Xfinity. Someone just explained to me how that works and that it actually uses a tuner on the TiVo. I had always assumed it was completely IP based since it's available on XBox, which doesn't have a tuner. However apparently on TiVo it actually works more like traditional VOD just with communication going over the internet rather then up the line like it does with a regular box.

I forgot about Xfinity. Someone just explained to me how that works and that it actually uses a tuner on the TiVo. I had always assumed it was completely IP based since it's available on XBox, which doesn't have a tuner. However apparently on TiVo it actually works more like traditional VOD just with communication going over the internet rather then up the line like it does with a regular box.

We're on Charter here so I don't even have the option to use VOD.

Yup. It's literally regular VOD with a little bit of bridge code written to do the commands over IP. Comcast's IP-VOD is a subset of their regular VOD selection, and is available online on their website.